Month: May 2009

My friend Matt and I saw this sign one day in Cincinnati. Its a sign from Tire Discounters, a local tire chain; they always have bizarre signs that are usually related to some sort of ad campaign that they’re running. However, one time, they had this sign up. I have no idea what its talking about or what it means. I mean, thumbs. You know, the things that make us better than most animals, besides our brains.

This weekend, Christi and I went to my friend Alex Mills’ wedding. It was in the Wren Chapel, and it was a short and lovely service. I think that the only time God was mentioned was in the final benediction, which was an old Irish blessing; however, it wasn’t that one that goes “The Lord bless you and keep you…” It was very nice. After the wedding, which only lasted 15 minutes, we went to the reception, which was held at Two Rivers Country Club. It was way out on Route 5 in Williamsburg. We got to hang out with Kate Major and her fiancee Noah, who I haven’t seen in awhile. We drove back today, after staying one night in Williamsburg.

So I’m in Virginia for the long weekend, to hang out with Christi and to go to a wedding. However, I forgot all of my good clothes at home… so we’re going to have to go to TJ Maxx or a thrift store or something to get me some clothes. Oh wellllll.

So I’m now starting to hit the point that I always hit when I start a new blog, the point when I run out of things to say on it. Usually, thats when I give up and ignore that blog for months on end. On my old livejournal, I probably started and stopped posting on it three or four times alone. I then have had three different blogs and another site on shadeball.org by itself: a tinywiki (or something like that), a static webpage on it when I was at William and Mary, redirected a blogger blog, and now this blog.

However, I’m going to try and keep this one going. Hopefully sometime this week I’ll write another Eliot and TW story and do some more photoblogging. I’m sure I’ll also write more stuff about archives and my personal life too.

If you hadn’t noticed, there’s a new page up on the link bar right there. Its where I’m going to keep a log/CV of all of the different archival stuff I’ve done. Right now its got links to all of the finding aids that I remember doing both at UNC and at WM. Stuff is going to be added to it fairly frequently, so if you like seeing me promote myself, you can check it out.

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is a book about the nature of violence in America. It tells the story of a family, the Clutters, who were murdered by two former inmates of Fort Levenworth, in Kansas. To me, the two most interesting parts are the buildup to the murders and the trial and appeal process.

The buildup to the murders show two different kinds of lives in America: the lives of a rich, rural family and the lives of two paroled ex-convicts. The Clutters had may have seemed like the all-American family, and in a way I guess they were. The farther was a strict but compassionate businessman. The son as somewhat of a loner, good with his hands. The daughter, beloved by all but told by her father to break off her relationship with her Catholic boyfriend. The mother with some sort of mental illness, perhaps a kind of depression, going off to various mental hospitals. This book could have been rewritten as a study in mental illness, focusing on the mother and the two criminals, especially Perry. The personal life of the criminals is a story of poverty: one criminal, Dick, had a fairly normal childhood, if poor; the other, Perry had both a poor and abusive childhood. Both seem to be trying to improve their station, but the means by which the think to do this is through robbing a rich farmer.

The trial and appeals process delved more deeply into the theme of mental illness. In Kansas at the time, the test for whether or not an insanity defense could be used was called the M’Naughten Rule. This rule stated that if the defendant could distinguish right from wrong, no matter how else their mental illness affected them, they were legally sane and could be tried normally. However, Capote mainly uses this as a way to talk about the law; I wish he would have used it to delve more into the nature of mental illness and America.

It does seem like this book tries to concentrate on too many elements, and is too bound by the exact timeline of how things happened. The backstory, the childhood of the criminals is only revealed when the police are told this backstory. This leads to a 20 page interlude right after the criminals had been captured, which could have been well put elsewhere. Overall, however, I liked this book.

I’m thinking of writing my master’s paper about Web 2.0 technologies and archives. I don’t really have it narrowed down any further than that yet, although by the middle to end of the summer I’m going to need to. I’m taking research methods in the fall, and so it is recommended that I have my topic in mind going into that class, so that by the end of it I will have a full master’s paper proposal ready to go and start working on in my last semester.

I should probably focus on one sort of Web 2.0 technology: blogging, flickr, facebook and twitter all come to mind. Perhaps some others are out there that people are using, but I think those four are four of the main ones that are out there right now. I think what I’m going to start doing is create a category for each of those in Zotero and start plugging in articles I find along the way. Then, when it comes to the end of the summer I’ll be able to really see how much information there is out there, and hopefully one or more of those articles will spark an inspiration for a study that I can perform.

Today I’m trying a new kind of tea, Colonille black tea which is made by serendipiTea. I usually don’t really like black teas, and recently I think I figured out why. Its the same reason I don’t like coffee: I think that its the fact that both of these drinks are roasted before you brew them, and I think the roasting puts in flavors that I don’t like.

It was given to me by my friend Elizabeth, so I figured I should at least give it a chance. I brewed it for about 2 and a half minutes, which is what Liz recommended. When I first smelled it after brewing it, it kind of smelled like it was a semi-weak hot chocolate; I think that’s the vanilla flavoring.

Taking the first sip, it seems to have a pretty mild flavor; not very much roastedness, which is good, but also not a lot of sweetness, which is kind of what I expected through the smell. I think I’m going to have to try it with milk, sugar, and milk and sugar.

Adding sugar makes it taste even more like hot chocolate, and adding milk to the sugar makes it taste even MORE like hot chocolate. Its really quite strange. The flavoring helps cut the roasted taste of regular black tea and makes it quite drinkable. I can’t decide how I best like it, straight up or with milk and sugar. I think I’ll have to try more of both to determine. This is definitely a very pleasant tea.

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can raise our good crops?
To fall like dry leaves and rot on our topsoil
And be known by no names except “deportees”

“Deportee” by Woody Guthrie

I’m thinking about changing where I get my groceries, from Trader Joe’s to Whole Foods. Both are pretty similar stores; they both like to get organic foods, foods with no preservatives, things like that. Whole Foods, though, has two advantages: its a real grocery store, with a full meat counter, full bakery, etc etc and that they really try to get a lot of local food. I think the thing that did it for me in the end was the fact that they have gallons of milk in glass bottles from a local dairy farm. Local food is a thing that I like; it allows you to contribute to the local economy and keep local farmers in business against big corporate farms. Also, you get the freshest food; the milk that I got from Whole Foods is definitely fresher than milk that I’ve gotten from Harris Teeter. So I think I’m gonna keep going to Whole Foods, for now at least.

In addition to this blog, I am now (at least occasionally) blogging on two other blogs out there in the world: Southern Sources and BlueNC. They’re both very different, obviously: Southern Sources is the blog of the Southern Historical Collection, where I work as a manuscripts processor. Things posted there are probably going to be specifically about collections, programs, and other things that the Southern Historical Collection is doing. BlueNC, on the other hand, is a community blog for Democrats in North Carolina. I’ve only written two posts there, but if I have more political things to say, I’m going to say them there and not at a bigger site like Daily Kos. I like reading Daily Kos still, but posting my own things there is not very worthwhile. Anything that I write just gets taking off the recently updated board quickly, never to be seen again, and I don’t write enough or well enough to develop a loyal following of readers. I think I might crosspost most of what I write on the other websites too, or somehow link to them. But we’ll see.

So my girlfriend is her this weekend from Virginia, huzzah! This morning we went on a brisk walk down a trail near my apartment. I think its stuff like this that I need to do to keep exercising on a regular basis. I like going to the gym better than just running outside; I feel like I can run farther and its easier to listen to music and such distractions in the gym. For me, its hard to get to the gym since I don’t live on campus; I either need to go when I can park on campus or I have to bring a bag and clothes and shower in the showers there. Neither of these options are really appealing to me, although I drive there more often than I bring my clothes. There’s a comment on American society there, but I’m just going to leave that one alone. So I think a brisk walk/jog in the morning is a good addition and it will keep me from just doing nothing and losing anything that I may be trying to build up by going to the gym. It also helps that Christi is here, because I much prefer working out with someone; it encourages me.